Epstein Secrets

e missiles, followed by self- congratulation and an attempt to change the topic. It would not work here. A minority regime fighting for its life, as Bashar al- Assad's is, can weather a couple of dozen big bangs. More important, no one — friends, enemies or neutrals — would be fooled. As weak as the Un

put his credibility on the line irrevocably and inescapably; second, he now must take direct military action to punish the government of President Bashar al-Assad, though not in a manner that commits him to further use of force; and third, he needs to combine whatever force he uses now with dramatic and dipl

opposition to doing so (60 percent) among polled Americans, and a growing and potent consensus among foreign policy experts and politicians to give Assad a hard punch. Most administration officials and most Americans just can't see any lasting benefits from any form of direct U.S. military involveme

what the Russians and Iranians fear would have been an easy win in Syria cannot be explained by them in any other way. This is dangerous. Just as Nikita Khrushchev concluded that President Kennedy was weak and incompetent after the Bay of Pigs failure and the botched Vienna summit, and then proceeded to test t

ves and diplomats have stepped up their contacts with Syrian rebels in part to help organize their burgeoning military operations against President Bashar al-Assad's forces, according to senior U.S. officials." This would certainly be promising news—except it is the third time in the last month administration

uld have little trouble finding suitable recipients. It hasn't because the White House isn't eager to act. The question is, will moral revulsion at Assad's crimes finally force it off the sidelines? It's understandable why a conflict that by some estimates has already cost the lives of more than 14,

ng to stop the Soviets from operationalizing the missiles already there. A tense second week followed during which Kennedy and the Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev, stood "eyeball to eyeball," neither side backing down. Saturday, Oct. 27, was the day of decision. At the last minute, the crisis was resolved wit

ammad Suleiman, a top aide to President Bashar al-Assad who had been working with North Korea to build a

71 184 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS 2008. It revealed that a group of Israeli commandos killed General Muhammad Suleiman, a top aide to President Bashar al-Assad who had been working with North Korea to build a nuclear facil- ity in Syria. Israel had destroyed that facility in Operation Orchard nearly a year e

essful intelligence operation. The CIA considered one of its greatest coups of the Cold War its release of the espionage-acquired @ secret speech of Nikita Khrushchev to the Communist Party of the @ Soviet Union in 1956 exposing the transgressions of the previous regime of Joseph Stalin. Making public these deeds w